Nick Cutter
Evolutionary zoologist and team leader, Professor Nick Cutter, is a maverick. Hard-bitten, cynical and Scottish he struggles with rules and authority – to the extent that he doesn’t even turn up for his own lectures. There are rumors he has a softer side but he’s keen to dispel those. He prefers fossils to live animals, the Stones to the Beatles and thinks there’s more chance of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe than there is in the government. His mission is to make sense of the anomalies which are allowing creatures from the past, and the future, to roam the modern world. For Cutter this is not just a professional mission, he has a personal interest. His wife, Helen Cutter, went missing and was presumed dead for eight years. He discovered that Helen was actually traveling through the anomalies. Her return has left a lot of questions unanswered. After escalating events during episode 3 of the third series, Cutter was shot in the chest by his wife Helen, but managed to survive long enough to pass on the Artifact to Connor, before dying. Pre-Anomalies Cutter meets Helen Ambrose in college and they soon have a speedy romance, before getting married. Stephen Hart is one of his and Helen's students, and he later gets a job as Cutter's lab technician. Nick's marriage runs into difficulty, and unbeknown to Nick Helen has an affair with Stephen. Helen becomes obsessed with "evolutionary puzzles" which could not be explained by conventional science. She comes up with theories that Cutter finds ridiculous, leading to them growing apart even more. After following up a creature sighting in the Forest of Dean, Helen discovers an anomaly and goes through, disappearing completely. Series 1 Episode 1.1 Eight years later, one of Cutter's students, Connor Temple, asks him to check out a creature sighting in the Forest of Dean. Although initially reluctant, Cutter gives in and travels there with Stephen and Connor, and joins up with government official Claudia Brown. They then meet reptile expert Abby Maitland. The four of them discover a Scutosaurus in the forest, and eventually find the anomaly, which leads to the Permian period. However, the Scutosaurus isn't the only prehistoric creature to come through: a ferocious, vicious and deadly Gorgonopsid has made its way into the present. It causes havoc and assaults a school. Cutter, with Home Office special ops leader Captain Tom Ryan, enter the anomaly on an exploratory mission. However, while they are there Cutter finds the remains of a camp, with a camera marked wth the initials 'H.C.' (Helen Cutter). When developed the photos are revealed to be of Helen. They also find a skeleton buried near the camp, but it is a male. The anomaly starts to fade, and Cutter wants to stay to try and find Helen. Ryan stops him and they eventualy return home. The Gorgonopsid reappears, but is defeated by Stephen. When the crisis has passed he sees Helen's silhouette in the darkness one night, and finds a live ammonite left in his study. He joins the government operation led by James Lester that is handling the anomaly situation, becoming their leading scientist. This is partly because he suspects Helen's involment with the anomalies and he wants to find her. Episode 1.2 Although everyone presumes the discovery of Helen's camera, millions of years in the past, confirms her death, Cutter is developing a different theory, but he keeps his speculations to himself. Meanwhile, Lester is growing increasingly annoyed with Cutter, but Claudia defends him as their only expert and Lester agrees to keep him involved... for now. Lester suspects Claudia has ulterior motives for keeping Nick onboard - he can see she likes him. Another anomaly opens in the London Underground, this time coming from the Late Carboniferous period. The team investigate after a cleaner is taken critically ill from a venomous bite. They discover that hundreds of giant spiders have come through the anomaly. Nick, Stephen and Abby enter the tunnels. They find that as well as the spiders a giant Arthropleura has reached the present day, and Connor is brought back in as they need his knowledge of extinct creatures. During a battle with the creature Nick is separated from the others. As he wanders the tunnels he thinks he catches glimpses of Helen. When he eventually makes his way out, he learns that Stephen has had an encounter with Helen. Cutter, Connor, Captain Ryan and his men re-enter the tunnels to obtain a venom sample from the Arthropleura, the only way to save Stephen. They eventually get the sample, kill the creature, and cure Stephen, but he has forgotten all about what Helen said to him. Episode 1.3 Nick is desperately trying to make Lester understand the deadly seriousness of the situation, but the Home Office official remains infuriatingly optimistic. A swimming pool lifeguard is killed, and Cutter suspects a creature involvement. His hunch is proved correct when the lifeguard's regurgitated body is found in a reservoir. A Mosasaur has travelled from the Cretaceous period through the underwater anomaly, and when a squad of divers enters the water one is killed. Nick realises that the anomaly has moved in our time, but remained fixed on the other side - the anomaly has shifted from Lambeth Baths to Queen Mary Reservoir. He presents this idea to Lester, who is extremely sceptical. Cutter theorises that the anomaly is moving along a faultline, and he predicts exactly the next position of the anomaly - a basement in Wakefield Road, London. Through the anomaly returns the body of the lost diver. Tied round its wrist is a message from Helen. Claudia is furious with Nick that he didn't reveal to her earlier that Helen was still alive, but when Lester arrives he orders Nick to go through the anomaly to get Helen to come back. Nick agrees on the condition that no soldiers accompany him. He swims through the anomaly into the Cretaceous period where, after eight years, he finds Helen. They talk. Helen tries to persuade Nick to stay with her so they could journey through the anomalies together, saying that everyone else doesn't matter, that they could unlock the secrets of time. However Nick can't forgive Helen for deserting him for eight years, and he goes back through the anomaly. After being attacked by the Mosasaur he is pulled back home. When he recovers from the attack he sees Cluadia order the soldiers to go through the anomaly and retrieve Helen by force. Helen is arrested and taken back to the Home Office. Episode 1.4 In a secure section of the Home Office Helen is interrogated by Claudia and Lester. She refuses to tell them anything, but she does say she will talk to Nick. When he arrives from a false alarm, Helen tells him that in a few hours an anomaly will open in central London and a pack of Sabre-Toothed Tigers will come through. She leads them to a football stadium, but her story about Sabre-Toothed Tigers was a bluff, and coming out of the anomaly instead is, much to the teams surprise, a flock of Dodos! Helen uses this opportunity to escape through the anomaly into a world full of anomalies. She quickly gets away. However, using one of the Dodos as a host is a Parasite. Connor's friends Tom and Duncan manage to kidnap that dodo, but it bites Tom and transfers the Parasite on to him. After a frantic chase around London Tom eventually dies after fighting the Parasite's vicious influences. Episode 1.5 Lester is getting increasingly impatiant with Cutter, as Nick has no solutions for the enigma of the anomalies. Lester piles the pressure on Claudia to get answers. Claudia is stuck between her head and her heart, as she is beginning to be romantically attracted to Nick. After a golfer is savagely killed the team are called in to investigate. They discover that an anomaly has opened in the air to the Cretaceous, and that a Pteranodon has come through. As Nick says, "How are we supposed to cordon off the skies?" The Pteranodon starts to fly towards Connor. Captain Ryan aims his gun at the creature and is ordered to shoot by Claudia. However, just before he shoots Nick knocks into him, disrupting his aim. Cutter believes that the Pteranodon is not the killer, and that they should refrain from unnecessary killing of creatures from the past. It turns out that he was right: the Pteranodon was actually going after Rex (a Coelurosauravus owned secretly by Abby), not Connor. The Pteranodon is eventually tranquilised, after it knocks out Claudia. The killers are revealed to be a flock of flesh-eating Anurognathus. They assault the golf course hotel, trapping Cutter and Claudia inside. Nick manages to escape, but before he leaves he kisses Claudia. Helen then appears and rescues Claudia, and disappears immediately after. Episode 1.6 Helen returns claiming to know the reason behind a recent spate of disappearances: an incredbly dangerous predator is amongst them. This creature is by far the most powerful the team have faced so far. It is lightning fast, ruthless, almost invisible until the moment of attack and has near-human levels of intelligence. But worst of all is that this creature is from the future, literally years ahead of them - a Future Predator. Knowing this Nick has none of his qualms about killing animals from the past - as this enemy is from the future there is no danger of altering their present day. He orders Captain Ryan and his men to kill the Future Predator. The team begin to track the beast, and they realise it is a highly-evolved form of bat, using echolocation to always stay one step ahead of its prey. They use an oscilloscope to hunt down the Future Predator's lair, where they find a nest of babies. Suddenly a Future Predator appears on the roof. Nick kidnaps one of the babies to lure the crteature away into a greenhouse. He starts shooting at the glass panels to confuse the creature's echolocation, and then finishes it off with a shot to the head. The babies are all captured and Nick wants to finish them off there and then. However Helen argues that they can use the babies to find the future anomaly and secure it permanantly. Lester agrees with Helen's plan. To get to the future anomaly they have to travel into the original anomaly in the Forest of Dean, as an anomaly to the future has opened up in the Permian. Cutter, Helen, Captain Ryan and his men prepare to enter the anomaly with the babies. Just before they go however, Claudia calmly walks up to Nick and kisses him, right in front of Helen. When they make it through they set up a camp and Cutter takes some souvenir photos. With a climactic shock he realises that the photos he had just taken were the same ones that he found in Helen's camera on the first mission into the Permian. He rushes down to the team's case of supplies and sees that it is the exact one that was found with the body. He is horrified, as this means that they have created their own past. Suddenly another Future Predator attacks - the remaining parent of the babies. It tears though Captain Ryan, but as it prepares to attack Nick a Gorgonopsid appears. The two colossal beasts charge towards each other and the Gorgonopsid stuns the Future Predator. While the Future Predator is down the Gorgonopsid feasts on the babies, appearing to eat them all. The Future redator rises and a savage batle ensues, ultimately ending when the Gorgonopsid crushes the Future Predator under its own body. Nick goes to Ryan, who realises that the body they found the first time was his. Nick buries the men killed in the attack, and returns home with Helen. But Helen has one final blow to deliver. She tells everyone that she wishes to return through the anomalies, but this time with Stephen. Stephen then reveals to Nick his affair with Helen, but decides to stay in the present day. Cutter is left stunned as Helen walks back through the anomaly, but not as stunned as when he realises that Claudia has disappeared. When he tells this to the team they tell him they don't know anyone called Claudia Brown. This can only mean one thing: while in the Permian, Nick changed something which resulted in Claudia Brown never existing... Series 2 Episode 2.1 At the Forest of Dean anomaly site Nick tries to go back through the anomaly, desparate to find Claudia Brown, but Stephen and Connor hold him back. Cutter then realises the full extent of the changes that have occured to his world. Incredibly, the Home Office is no longer the team base. Instead the team have their own headquaters, an incredibly hi-tech, highly sophisticated facility named the Anomaly Research Centre, or ARC. There is also a whole new team of secondary staff working for them, primarily Oliver Leek, the man now doing Claudia Brown's job. Cutter is so shocked he nearly faints! When he tries to tell the team about his theory of the past being changed, everyone thinks he has gone mad - everyone, that is, except for Connor, who is the only one to believe Nick. Almost immediately the team get a call about an incursion at a shopping centre. Cutter, Stephen, Connor and Abby head over there and arm themselves only with tranquilisers, as Cutter is adamant that they can't kill any more creatures as it risks changing the past. They eventually find three Deinonychus in the mall: two adults and one child. The Deinonychus are a highly dangerous species of raptor from the Cretaceous period. Stephen tries to discuss his affair with Helen but Nick doesn't want to talk about it. When Connor and Abby go off to evacuate a cleaner Cutter and Stephen are left on their own. The two of them are attacked by one of the raptors, but when Nick tries to tranquilise it as it prepares to kill Stephen his gun jams. Stephen accuses him of intentionally allowing the creature to kill him in revenge, but Cutter rebuffs the claim on the grounds that if he wanted Stephen dead, he'd have shot him personally. The creature attacks again and is this time successfully tranquilised. Nick then forgives Stephen for his affair with Helen, on the grounds that he didn't go off through the anomalies, instead he stayed when it really mattered. Connor brings back the tranquilised baby Deinonychus. The team tie it up, hoping to draw in the remaining adult. The plan works and the raptor is tranquilised. Cutter notices that all the radios in the shop are suffering from some interference on the 86.7FM frequency and he suspects it to be connected to the anomaly. He theorises that they could build a receiver tuned in to that frequency that would alert them whenever any interference occurs - an anomaly detector. Cutter decides to take the raptors back through the anomaly personally. After freeing the creatures he stops and starts to walk away, but Stephen, expecting Nick to do something like this, comes through afterwards and tries to get him to come back. Nick states that all he wants to do is travel through the anomalies, find out what went wrong and put it right, but Stephen convinces him to return, on account of the fact he has work to do, and the fear that by meddling with the anomalies he could potentially change things for the worse - even wipe out humanity - and still not get Claudia back. They start to go back, but the now awake Deinonychus come after them. They eventually get back through safely. The mall safe, they head back to the ARC. When they are there Lester introduces them to a new member of their team, a PR professional named Jenny Lewis. But Cutter is shocked to the core when it is revealed that Jenny Lewis is a complete copy of Claudia Brown. Episode 2.2 Nick is struggling to cope with the appearance of Jenny Lewis. Just when he was beginning to have feelings for Claudia, the past is somehow changed, which creates a world where she is now Jenny Lewis. Cutter begins to expand on this idea to the team, but is stopped by Connor. He prevents his professor from embarrassing himself even further, and urges him not to mention the subject again until he has gained proof. Also, Lester reluctantly gives Cutter a budget for building the anomaly detector system. That job is assigned to Connor. The team recieve a creature alert in a high-rise city centre office block and they head over there. Nick, Stephen, Connor and Abby enter the building, while Jenny remains outside as operations manager on the ground. The office block is covered in a thick fog, and lurking in that fog the team discover are giant, carniverous Worms. Jenny, who up to this point has been completely disbelieving about the team fighting creatures from other time periods, is determined to find out the truth. She enters the building and has to be rescued by Cutter, who, after fighting off the worms wwith her, is impressed by her bravery, guts and determination. Nick suddenly realises that the Worms need the fog to survive. As they are from the Precambrian period they are used to a more sulphurus atmosphere, making oxygen poisonous to them. Using this knowledge the team manage to kill all of the Worms. That night Cutter goes to Jenny's house; he knocks on the door, and offers to explain everything to her. But he is shocked when her fiancé comes to the door. Making his excuses, he departs. Episode 2.3 Connor has finally perfected the Anomaly Detectin Device, or ADD for short. However, it appears not to work as the team get a call saying that a paintballer at Blue Sky Theme Park has been mauled to death. Upon reaching the theme park Nick agrees with Deputy Manager of the park Valerie Irwin that the park should be evacuated, but Jenny and the Park Manager Peter Campbell refuse, believing it would draw too much attention from the press. The team go looking for the beast. Peter Campbell is killed at a nearby railway station, but the incident was recorded on video by a trainspotter. Upon examining the foootage Cutter discovers that the killer is an enormous Smilodon, a sabre-toothed killer from the Pleistocene epoch. But why didn't the ADD alert the team? When they find a man's body buried in the woods they work out that there is human involvement. After fighting off the Smilodon with Abby Nick finds a photo of Valerie in the dead man's pocket. Cutter comes to the conclusion that the anomaly opened years ago, before the detector was online, and the Smilodon came through as a cub. Valerie took it in, but she has had to cover up the deaths caused by it. He goes to Valerie's house, but she traps him with the Smilodon. In a blood-frenzy the Smilodon kills Valerie when she gets too confident with it. Nick is rescued by the team and the Smilodon is tranquilised. Back at the ARC, Oliver Leek informs Cutter that the Smilodon died being transported back to the ARC. Cutter can't believe him, as the cat was perfectly healthy. Leek suggests shock, or an overdose of tranquilizer, but when Cutter asks to do his own post-mortem, Leek refuses, saying that the body had been destroyed to stop the spread of disease. Episode 2.4 When an anomaly opens underwater a teenage boy named Lucien Hope is dragged into a flooded drain. Cutter and the team launch a frantic search that leads them from the drain to a nearby canal. The team begin to scour the canal for evidence of a creature, where Jenny narrowly escapes an attack by a shark, however, Cutter and Stephen arrive in the nick of time to save her and kill the shark. Back at the ARC the creature's post-mortem suggests it may not have come from the past. However, Cutter thinks there is a different creature - a marine mammal - out there and he feels certain they are looking for it in the wrong place. Despite orders from Lester to the contrary, Cutter decides to follow his hunch. Before that however, he recognises one of their special forces guards as the cleaner that was meant to have been killed in he mall. He knocks Nick out and promptly dissappears. 'The Cleaner' appears to have been following the team. Eventually, Cutter, with Connor and Abby's help, puts into action a plan to lure the creature to them. The plan works a little too well when a creature jumps out of the water and grabs Abby, dragging her beneath the water. The team desperately search the canal looking for Abby but they can find no trace of either her or the creature. Stephen and Cutter presume she must be dead and call off the search. Lester arrives and promptly fires Cutter for disobeying orders and indirectly causing Abby's death. In secret, Jenny provides Cutter with information about a flooded warehouse, which Cutter deduces could be the lair of the creatures. Cutter contacts Connor and convinces him to help find the creature. They search the warehouse that has apparently flooded and they find Abby and Lucien are still alive: the creatures were storing them for food. This excitement is short lived when Abby is taken by a creature, later dubbed 'the Mer'. Connor goes off to search for her, while Lucien and Cutter are left to fight the remaining Mer on their own. Fortunately Stephen arrives to save Cutter. It turns out that Connor has gone through the future anomaly to rescue Abby. Cutter and Stephen go after him and turn up just in time to save him and Abby from the gargantuan MerQueen. Nick and Stephen gun the creature down. Lester joins the team back in the present day and thanks Cutter for returning to their aid. Abby asks Cutter if what they saw through the anomaly is their future, but Cutter explains humanity will be extinct long before then, or perhaps mankind will simply return to the waters from where they came: the Mer could potentially be descended from humans. Episode 2.5 In the ARC the anomaly detector registers an anomaly. Suddenly there is a power surge, and when Connor reboots the machine on it now registers no anomalies. Nick tells Connor that he expects someone has tapped the power and stole the location of the anomaly using spyware, but also to talk about it to no one. The team discover the anomaly's location and Cutter, accompanied by Jenny, go to investigate. Cutter and Jenny find the anomaly when a small dog runs out. Realising its owner may be on the other side, Cutter calls in the rest of the team. Connor sends his latest invention- a remote control camera buggy- through the anomaly. The arid desert landscape leads Cutter to deduce the anomaly leads to the Silurian. On the screen, they see a girl, and Cutter and Stephen decide to go through the anomaly to investigate. On the other side, they come across the remnants of a group of mercenaries' battle with an unknown creature. Stephen points this out to be evidence of a traitor's presence in the ARC. when Cutter shows no surprise at this revelation, Stephen accuses him of withholding the information and remarks they are supposed to be working as a team. Moving on, they head in the direction of the girl and narrowly reach her position on a rocky outcrop, just ahead of a mysterious creature pursuing them beneath the sand. She tells them her name is Taylor. Cutter, Stephen and Taylor are unable to reach the anomaly in time, and it closes, leaving them trapped in the Silurian. They are caught in a sandstorm. To their relief, the portable anomaly detector registers another anomaly, but its battery is fading fast. The group suddenly are confronted by 'the Cleaner', who forces the trio to hand over their water and the anomaly detector at gunpoint. But one of the creatures attacks the mercenary from beneath. The group are forced to cross a series of sand dunes slowly, to avoid attracting the attention of the creatures and reach the anomaly. Taylor attracts one of the creatures which is revealed to be a giant scorpion. But before it can attack them, a second scorpion attacks it. Cutter goes back to grab the night vision goggles: the proof of the traitor's identity. The trio race down the dune and run through the anomaly ahead of the scorpion. On the other side of the anomaly, the group find themselves in what they think are the days of the caveman. An early human appears and Cutter swiftly knocks him out with a well-placed punch. However, Abby and Connor then emerge from the forest. Lester is also present. He welcomes Cutter back, preffering him to be running the anomaly project than Connor, but Stephen and Cutter, wary of treachery, deal with him coldly. Back at the ARC, Cutter leaves the night-vision goggles in his office for later study when he goes to get a cup of coffee: on his return, he finds they have been stolen. At the end of Series 2 Cutter's world becomes even harder when Helen's conspiracy becomes apparent. He is eventually captured and held in Leek's "Anomaly Zoo" before he sabotages the equipment, destroying Leek's control over the Future Predators, which then kill their former master. Despite this, Cutter's best friend Stephen has to sacrifice himself to stop all of Leek's captured creatures escaping. (Episode 2.7) Series 3 Cutter can't forget Stephen's death and blames himself for it. (Episode 3.1) At work, he has developed an "anomaly map" known as the Matrix which can be used to predict anomalies. (Episode 3.2) Just when a relationship between Nick and Jenny begins to get strong, the ARC team receives the visit of Helen, who claims she must destroy Cutter because if not he will cause a lot of damage to the world in the future. She places a bomb in the ARC, which fails to kill him, but Cutter then comes back to save Helen only to be shot and killed in the act of stealing the "artifact", so it can later be collected by Connor. He was also duplicated into a clone. (Episode 3.3) It is soon discovered that Cutter knew what the artifact was when Sarah and Conner briefly opened it to reveal part of the Matrix that Cutter had built, meaning that Cutter might have had some idea of what it was all along. (Episode 3.6) Notes After Cutter died, he was replaced in the opening credits by Danny Quinn, played by Jason Flemyning. External Link *Character guide on ITV.com http://www.itv.com/Drama/cult/Primeval/TheTeam/NickCutter/default.html Cutter, Nick Cutter, Nick